Retired diplomat Edmund Gullion coined the term Public Diplomacy (PD) in 1965 while serving as Dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in Massachusetts (USA). The Fletcher School established The Edward R. Murrow Center for Public Diplomacy in memory of Murrow (1908-1965). Upon Gullion’s death in 1998, he received a write-up in the New York Times, which does not include the words “public diplomacy” but infers its value with reference to The Murrow Center, which “intended to establish direct communications with the peoples of other lands and to build mutual understanding. It also fit nicely with Mr. Guillion’s view, expressed just recently: ‘I always thought journalists and diplomats could learn a great deal from one another.’”

Public Diplomacy is a cross-section of international communication and diplomacy. It is a relatively new paradigm (pattern, model) in the field of international relations and the practice of diplomacy. Unlike traditional diplomacy, which only focuses on state-level relations, PD acknowledges the multifaceted nature of international communications, and can be carried out by individual citizens and NGO’s, as well as governmental agents and agencies. Simply put, PD focuses on the strategies, techniques and practice of influencing public attitudes and opinions.

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It’s been almost ten years, but US Soft Power never looked so promising as when Barack Obama was inaugurated in 2009. Just check out this Voice of America feature:

The king of soft power is Joseph S. Nye Jr., Dean Emeritus of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. You cannot advance in your understanding of public diplomacy without a nod to Nye and what he has meant to our understanding of this concept. Soft power lies in the ability to attract and persuade. Whereas hard power—the ability to coerce—grows out of a country’s military or economic might, soft power arises from the attractiveness of a country’s culture, political ideals, and policies. That said, do not assume that soft power is a carpet of roses that leads nations into peace and harmony. If policies are bad, then no amount of soft power appeal will make a difference. Soft power follows good policies, and good policies reinforce soft power.

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Liberal and critical approaches challenge the central claims of realism: anarchy, primacy of state actors, rationality, and the utility of military force.

Liberals dispute the realist notion that narrow self-interest is more rational than mutually beneficial cooperation.

Neoliberalism argues that even in an anarchic system of autonomous rational states, cooperation can emerge through the building of norms, regimes, and institutions.

Collective goods are benefits received by all members of a group regardless of their individual contribution. Shared norms and rules are important in getting members to pay for collective goods.

International regimes–convergent expectations of state leaders about the rules for issue areas in IR–help provide stability in the absence of a world government.

Hegemonic stability theory suggests that the holding of predominant power by one state lends stability to international relations and helps create regimes.

In a collective security arrangement, a group of states agrees to respond together to aggression by any participating state; the UN, NATO and other IGOs perform this function.

Peace Studies is interdisciplinary and seeks to broaden the study of international security to include social and economic factors ignored by realism.

Peace Studies acknowledges a normative bias–that peace is good and war is bad–and a willingness to put theory into practice by participating in politics.

Mediation and other forms of conflict resolution are alternative means of exerting leverage on participants in bargaining. Increasingly these means are succeeding in settling conflicts without (or with no further) use of violence.

For scholars in peace studies, militarism in many cultures contributes to states’ propensity to resort to force in international bargaining.

Positive Peace implies not just the absence of war but addressing conditions that scholars in peace studies connect with violence–especially injustice and poverty.

Peace movements try to influence state foreign policies regarding military force; such movements are of great interest in peace studies.

Nonviolence–the renunciation of force–can be an effective means of leverage, especially for poor or oppressed people with few other means available.

Feminist scholars of IR agree that gender is important in understanding IR but diverge into several strands regarding their conception of the role of gender.

Standpoint feminists* argue that real (not arbitrary) differences between men and women exist. Men think about social relations more often in terms of autonomy (as do realists), but women think in terms of connection.

Standpoint feminists argue that men are more warlike on average than women. Although individual women participants (such as state leaders) may not reflect this difference, the participation of large numbers of women would change the character of the international system, making it more peaceful.

Liberal feminists disagree that women have substantially different capabilities or tendencies as participants in IR. They argue that women are equivalent to men in virtually all IR roles. As evidence, liberal feminists point to historical and present-day women leaders and women soldiers.

*Standpoint feminism holds that social science should be practiced from the standpoint of women or particular groups of women, as some scholars say that women are better equipped to understand some aspects of the world.

Anarchy: absence of governmental authority/State: Organized political unit that has a geographic territory, stable population, and a government to which the population owes allegiance and that is legally recognized by other states/Rational actor: in realist thinking, a state or individual that uses logical reasoning to select a policy; that is, it has a defined goal to achieve, considers a full range of alternative strategies, and selects the policy that best achieves the goal.

Former New York Times correspondent Stephen Kinzer sets out a very plausible reason why the US, UK and France keep intervening in Syria. It is not about children or chemical weapons. It is to prevent the Syrian government and Russia triumphing over the jihadists, as they have been close to doing for some time.

So this weekend’s actions are not simply about chemical weapons violations. True enough, if such weapons are used in “Nowherestan,” the United States and its coalition allies are not likely to bomb, even if a good argument can be made for enforcing international law against such crimes. The United States is not the world’s police force. But if such crimes take place in a region whose destabilization can lead to global disorder, and if they take place with the cooperation of powers, like Russia, that mean us ill, then the United States can and should act.

Rational-actor approaches treat states as though they were individuals acting to maximize their own interests.

International anarchy–the absence of world government–means that each state is a sovereign and autonomous actor pursuing its own national interests.

The international system traditionally places great emphasis on the sovereignty of states, their right to control affairs in their own territory, and their responsibility to respect internationally recognized borders.

Seven great powers* account for over half of the world’s GDP as well as the great majority of military forces and other power capabilities.

Realists believe that a hegemon–the predominance of one state in the international system–can help provide stability and peace in international relations.

The economic variant of realism, mercantilism, shares many of realism’s central assumptions (in particular about primacy of states, power and anarchy) and applies them to economic issues.

Mercantilists tend to suggest policies of economic nationalism.

Source: International Relations by Joshua S. Goldstein and Sandra Whitworth

The Group of Seven or G7 is an informal bloc of industrialized democracies consisting of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States. The European Union has participated fully in the G7 since 1981 as a “nonenumerated” (separate) member. These countries represent the 7 largest advanced economies in the world.